{"id":498,"date":"2012-06-26T18:37:18","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T22:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/?p=498"},"modified":"2012-06-26T18:39:16","modified_gmt":"2012-06-26T22:39:16","slug":"homeowners-association-sign-regulations-violate-free-speech-rights-under-state-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/2012\/06\/26\/homeowners-association-sign-regulations-violate-free-speech-rights-under-state-constitution\/","title":{"rendered":"Homeowners&#8217; Association sign regulations violate free speech rights under state constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court of New Jersey held in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.judiciary.state.nj.us\/opinions\/supreme\/A6510MazdabrookCommonsHOAvKahn.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Mazdabrook Commons Homeowners&#8217; Ass&#8217;n v. Khan<\/a>, \u2014 A.3d \u2014, 2012 WL 2120868 (N.J. 2012), that the free speech clause of the state constitution guarantees the right to post political signs on one&#8217;s property and that any covenants or rules of a homeowners association to the contrary are unenforceable. The owner in this case posted a sign inside the window of his townhouse and a second sign inside his door. Those signs supported his own candidacy for town council. The Association&#8217;s rules banned all signs other than &#8220;for sale signs.&#8221; The court distinguished its earlier ruling in Committee for a Better Twin Rivers v. Twin Rivers Homeowners&#8217; Ass&#8217;n, 929 A.2d 1060 (N.J. 2007), which upheld minor restrictions on sign placement by property owners who were members of the association and did not involve an election to a state or local public office as was the the case in <em>Mazdabrook<\/em>. Conversely, because the sign was on Khan&#8217;s own property, and not common property managed by the association, his interests were stronger. The ruling was premised on prior cases interpreting New Jersey&#8217;s free speech clause to apply to private actors on private property in at least some instances, a ruling at odds with the First Amendment which only applies to the federal government or &#8220;state actors&#8221; through the Fourteenth Amendment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Supreme Court of New Jersey held in Mazdabrook Commons Homeowners&#8217; Ass&#8217;n v. Khan, \u2014 A.3d \u2014, 2012 WL 2120868 (N.J. 2012), that the free speech clause of the state constitution guarantees the right to post political signs on one&#8217;s property and that any covenants or rules of a homeowners association to the contrary are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1166,18736,13325],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumer-protection","category-real-estate-transactions","category-servitudes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5SHi7-82","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":500,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions\/500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}